Friends with Misaki
by reminiscent-afterthought
Summary: [game-verse] I didn't like Misaki at first, but somehow, we became good friends.


**A/N:** I finished playing Over the Nexus, and in record time too. :D Now I just need to finish Reverse of Arcadia...

For those of you not familiar with the games, Over the Nexus follows the stuff with Crash Town/Satisfaction Town and the three emperors, up to the WRPG finals. Toru and Misaki are both non-playable characters that the player is teamed up with for most of the WRPG matches – except when the mass duel bot invasion injures everyone except the player, Jack and Yusei, forcing them to team up to defeat Team New World. Misaki is sort of like Bruno; she doesn't show signs of amnesia, but she does transform into a spiky-haired alter ego and rescue the player from the Duel Bots. The player doesn't seem too surprised to see the alter ego and it's never mentioned again, so I'm not convinced it's the same situation as Yusei not recognising Bruno as Vector. Team Triwinds is the name I selected from Toru's rather extensive (and mostly two-worded) list. The narrator is the player. For the purposes of this fic, she's a female, since, again, that's how I played the game. Also, I doubt Klaus would want Toru and the narrator to give him great-grandkids if they were both guys. :D

Written for the Becoming the Tamer King challenge on the RANDOM Forum, game-verse Registration task.

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**Friends with Misaki**

I didn't like Misaki at first. Her silence was creepy, and her blank expression even more so. I came from Crash Town after all: people there lied with the best of them, but there was no-one who could hide their expression that well.

The worst of it was how close she seemed to have gotten to Toru in the year between his arrival in the city and mine. I was Toru's best friend after all, and…well, maybe I'd expected him to wait for me. I'd certainly expected him to wait a little longer instead of leaving the day after his Duel Runner was finished – but that might have been my fault, beating him in that little race we'd had outside town. I don't know if I had run; West was doing the timing. But West likes us both; there's no reason he would favour one of us over the other. Unless he'd been hoping Toru would get turbo duelling out of his head and stay.

If that was the case, that loss had just made him more determined. Still, I hadn't expected him to find a mechanic girl friend, or worse, girlfriend – though Toru insists that's not the case. I hope it's not, even if the two of _us_ falling in love will probably never happen. Even _if_ Grandpa seems to be expecting kids from the pair of us. Just because he was the only guy my age back in Crash Town…

But somehow I still felt…replaced by Misaki.

That faded away after a bit. I'm nowhere near as good as Toru at mechanics, so of course he'd need someone better if he couldn't manage it himself. And it was always his dream to have a turbo team with me; of course we'd need a third member for that, and Nico and West another pair and far too young. So that third person would have to be either Grandpa or someone new, and somehow I don't think Grandpa would have been too pleased with us if we'd asked him.

So Misaki wasn't bad as far as third teammates went. She was handy with tools and programming, so we could leave our repairs, more or less, up to her. We had needed to call in Yusei at one point, to help fix up my Duel Runner the first time. Then again, that Duel Runner had needed a complete overhaul, so it was too big of a task for us to be able to handle alone. And she did talk…a little.

She also looked a little sad to see me and Toru catching up. I guess that's what first opened me up to her, moreso than the gratefulness for helping out with the Duel Runner since that had been Toru's idea in the first place.

Still, she'd teamed up with me for that Tag Duel, and she'd been a pretty decent duellist too.

But I was jealous of how close she'd gotten to Toru in the past year. How Toru could send me off to get parts or something, and be chatting with her, or to her, when I got back. How I never really heard how the two of them wound up meeting in the first place, or why they lived together. That was another thing: Toru and I had lived next door, but we'd never so much as spent the night at the other's house, even though Nico and West often did. But then…maybe Toru hadn't had an easy time finding accommodations like Grandpa and I. Maybe it had been a coincidence, just like it was a coincidence I'd met Crow that first time.

It took me a little to notice how Misaki was jealous of my relationship with Toru too. How she always seemed quieter when I was around. How she never really interrupted Toru when he got carried away. How she never accepted the offer to hang out some place after repairs or duelling practise – and how she rarely even practised with Toru and me, the pair of us maxing out our Duel Runners as we bounced off corners at the training courses.

It was even worse if we were practising with Crow, or Jack, or Akiza. Or Yusei, though I don't think _I've_ ever practised with him. The Duel-bots had gotten in the way of that one. Toru has though, so he counts.

It was a little unfortunate that Toru was the chatterbox in our group; that made it harder for me and Misaki to sort our petty little feelings out. We duelled occasionally. I mostly won. Sometimes I helped out with fixing the Duel Runners in her little shop. Usually she had to explain things step by step – the most she'd talk to me.

But she'd come to help me with the Duel Bots. She'd protected me, even though that meant Toru had gotten hurt. And I don't know why she found it necessary to suit up and spike her hair and ride a Duel Runner I'd only ever seen once before – I mightn't have recognised her that first time, but I had then. But I'd brought it up once and she'd just shaken her head at me. I guessed it wasn't something she wanted to talk about, or _could_ talk about, so I'd left it.

And she'd been really worried when I disappeared in the WRGP finals with Team New World. It had been written all over her face – a face that was usually devoid of any emotion. And really happy when we took our victory lap after beating Team 5D's in the true final – dubbed so because the two teams had had to join due to the injuries caused by the Duel Bots to take down team New World, leaving both Team 5D's and Team Triwinds still in the running.

Now I know she has her secrets, but also she has things beneath that. We're both her friends: Toru, and me as well. And she's mine as well. We're not a two person team with an additive: we're a three person one. Team Triwinds, the winners of the WRPG and best friends.

I don't really know what changed. I doubt Misaki does either. Maybe it was that time we spent together, no matter what we were doing in it. Maybe it was saving the world together. Or maybe it was the reason she'd come after me those times with the Duel Bots, the times she'd protected me as her other self. Maybe she'd been bitter about that: the reason she'd had to get close to Toru, and me. But all of that had passed, been shadowed. None of that mattered now. We'd formed different bonds through the course of the WRPG, not just with each other, but with Team 5D's as well.

I didn't like Misaki at first, but she's my good friend now.


End file.
